We are not kept long waiting for the consequence:
“Under the first of these relations rent is a monopoly. It restricts our usufruct and enjoyment of the gifts which God has given to men for the satisfaction of their wants. This restriction is just, only in as far as it is necessary for the common good.”
In what perplexity must those good souls be landed who refuse to admit anything to be necessary which is not just?
Scrope ends with these words:
“When it goes beyond this point, it must be modified on the same principle which caused it to be established.”
It is impossible for the reader not to perceive that these authors lead us to a negation of Property, and lead us to it very logically, in setting out with the proposition that the proprietor is paid for the gifts of God. Here we have rent held up as an injustice established by Law under the pressure of necessity, and which laws may modify or destroy under the pressure of another necessity. The Communists have never gone farther than this.
Senior.—“The instruments of production are labour and natural agents. Natural agents having been appropriated, proprietors charge for their use under the form of Rent, which is the recompense of no sacrifice whatever, and is received by those who have neither laboured nor put by, but who merely hold out their hands to accept the offerings of the rest of the community.”
After giving this heavy blow to property, Mr Senior explains that one portion of Rent resolves itself into the Interest of Capital, and then adds:
“The surplus is taken by the proprietor of the natural agent, and is his reward, not for having laboured or abstained, but simply for not having withheld what he was able to withhold; for having permitted the gifts of nature to be accepted.”
You will observe that this is still the same theory. The proprietor is supposed to interpose himself between the hungry mouth and the food which God has vouchsafed under the condition of [p254] labour. The proprietor who has co-operated in the work of production, charges first of all for his co-operation, which is just, and then he makes a second charge for the work of nature, for the use of natural agents, for the indestructible powers of the soil, which is iniquitous.